And the Wolf Finally Came: The Decline of the American Steel Industry.

• Author: Ignatius, David

In Pennsylvania, workers forged steel and a separate culture. Now both are almost gone.

One sad footnote to the troubles of industrial America is the decline of a proud specialty in American journalism: the labor reporter. In the old days covering unions was like covering the American dream, and it attracted some of the country's best and wisest reporters: John P. Moody at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, A.H. Raskin at 7'he New York Times, Frank Swoboda at The Washington Post, and the last three managing editors of The Wall Street Journal-Fred Taylor, Larry O'Donnell, and Norm Pearl stine-who all cut their teeth as newspapermen in Detroit.

What a job! And what an assault on the liver! Labor reporters and their sources closed saloons up and down the Monongahela River, along the shores of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan, at the resorts where unions invariably went for their conventions-Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Bal Harbour. One veteran labor reporter gave me some earnest advice when I began covering the beat in the mid-1970s: Always keep a bottle in your hotel room for when the bars close.

Our expense accounts included some bizarre items: trip to dog races in Miami with source, visit to strip joint in Las Vegas with source, champagne for bar girl and source in Chicago. Improbable as it sounds, on my first date with my future wife, in 1977, I took her to a professional wrestling match in Wheeling, West Virginia, where one of my best sources-the president of a Jones & Laughlin local in Pittsburgh--was wrestling under the name "Jumpin' Johnny DeFazio."

The danger for reporters in those days-other than alcohol poisoning-was that covering labor was like covering the home team. Unions were as American as apple pie, as American as piroshkis and kielbasa. Most reporters remained skeptical of the union leadership, which was often corrupt and sometimes tyrannical. But many journalists doted on union dissidents, like the Steelworkers' Ed Sadlowski and the Mineworkers' Arnold Miller. And even the best reporters tended to be sentimental about the workers themselves. Rare indeed were stories in the 1970s warning that the workers in the steel and auto industries who were winning huge wage increases might be pricing themselves out of jobs.

Among the best of the labor reporters in those days-and one who consistently avoided the mistakes of so many of his colleagues-was John Hoerr of BusinessWeek. Nobody had better sources, and nobody tried harder to cover both sides...